National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1301
I have many concerns about the changes that this bill proposes but I want to note that as a disabled person, the way in which the government has spoken about the lives of disabled people has been disgusting and inhumane. Based on this, I feel as if the government believes that disabled people are lesser than, that we can be treated as a monolith, that we have no personal agency, that our lives are expendable. I truly believe that the people who have made these proposed changes do not consider the lives of disabled people to be worth living.
Outsourcing the assessment of the needs of disabled people to a tool that is only functional based on the questions the assessor deigns to ask is dystopian. This tool has the capacity to cause untold amounts of harm by forcing participants be subjected to the whims of assessors who most likely have no personal experience with the nuances of disability. There is already widespread issues of evidence being ignored because the people making life changing decisions for disabled people do not understand the information. How will this tool be able to accurately reflect the individual needs of each person?
I want to believe that if people will be forced off the NDIS that it will only occur once there are other systems in place but unfortunately with the way this matter has been presented, I have very little trust in the empathy of our decision makers. People who are forced of the NDIS with no alternative systems in place will most likely die. Best case they will present as social admissions to hospital (with no guarantee of being admitted or even assessed). I am not being hyperbolic when I say that disabled people will die and unfortunately the impression I have gotten from the government is that this is the intended outcome.
I have reached my limit of parsing through the proposed changes and trying to force myself to be coherent enough to have my voice heard but I just want to ask why should disabled people be forced to suffer the consequences of previous governments mismanagement of the NDIS? These changes will negatively impact one of the most vulnerable groups of people in our community. A group that any person from any walk of life can join at any moment. Life does not discriminate when choosing who can be disabled and I sincerely hope that any person who had a hand in these changes does not one day have to experience the inhumane, demoralising reality of dealing with the NDIS.